


a blue and amber connection

by Star_on_a_Staff



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Action, Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst, Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Day 7 prompt, Disasters, Discovery, Dreams, Dubious Science, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Giant Robots, Giant monsters, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Loss, Memory, Mild Gore, Neural Handshake, Pacific Rim AU, Romance, Science Fiction, Violence, for fantasyfelannieweek2020, implied ships but nothing else but felannie really, in my AU? yes, we're hitting all the angst tags folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23691235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_on_a_Staff/pseuds/Star_on_a_Staff
Summary: His memories howl of loss.Blue-colored, like freshly spilled kaiju blood. The hue of Glenn’s rare laughter, rough and raspy. Razor sharp, like the many-folded blades buried deep in Aegis’ forearms.It’s easy to chase the RABIT (Random Access Brain Impulse Triggers)  when you’ve had a happy childhood and a terrible adulthood. The Drift thrives on memory, likes to eat it up like candy and spit them back out. It’s easy to plunge into the blue-colored maze of his own mind.But Felix grits his teeth, and focuses on lifting his right arm.Felix/Annette in a Pacific Rim AU. For Fantasy Felannie Week 2020, Day 7: Disaster/Discovery/Adventure.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 13
Kudos: 45
Collections: FantasyFelannieWeek2020





	a blue and amber connection

**Author's Note:**

> This is how I pay homage to my absolute favorite action movie of all time...by sloppily writing my OTP into it as lyrically as possible. 
> 
> SCI-FI IS A SUB GENRE OF FANTASY PLEASE LET ME DO THIS
> 
> I use a lot of movie terminology with very little explanation. This is a piece written for those who have seen the movie. If you have not, this will be confusing for you. I highly suggest that you watch it, it is such a good film. *slaps a pamphlet into your hand* GO FORTH. 
> 
> There is death and violence in this. A little graphic, nothing too bad, but this is a headsup for anyone is uncomfy with that. 
> 
> Enjoy!

His memories howl of loss. 

Blue-colored, like freshly spilled kaiju blood. The hue of Glenn’s rare laughter, rough and raspy. Razor sharp, like the many-folded blades buried deep in _Aegis_ ’ forearms. 

It’s easy to chase the RABIT (Random Access Brain Impulse Triggers) when you’ve had a happy childhood and a terrible adulthood. The Drift thrives on memory, likes to eat them up like candy and spit them back out. It’s easy to plunge into the blue-colored maze of his own mind. 

But Felix grits his teeth, and focuses on lifting his right arm. 

O.O

Her memories are colored amber. 

Warm, like the shade of her mother’s voice. Strong and distant, like her father’s carven features. Plated like the folds of a layered dress, guarding the intricate wiring of the nuclear core buried deep in _Aegis_ ’ chest. 

The first time she drifted, the connection wrenched her mind bare. It was a siren song, lulling her to chase the RABIT and forcing the marshal to pull the plug to the system before she suffered neural damage. Her co-pilot tumbled out of the simulation with a heavy nose bleed and crimson sclera. 

So now, she hums to herself in stubborn defiance, overpowering the RABIT’s call with her own inane songs. It helps.

In the present, Annette continues to hum, and clenches her left fist. 

O.O

And for the first time since the bitterly won victory on the shores of Duscur five years ago, _Aegis_ raises both arms in a fighting pose and the Shatterdome applauds.

O.O

He flips past the pages of her memory with careful curiosity. 

The first time she learned to ride a bike, when she scraped both of her knees and cried for two hours straight. The taste of her favorite cookies, crumbly but not too powdery. The texture of the homespun fabric of her mother’s paisley dress. 

Her first kiss, lost in the horror that was the first kaiju attack. The agony of losing her father to the panicked rush of the first Jaegar program, helpless to do anything as he stumbled home every night dizzy with fatigue and onset symptoms of nuclear poisoning. Sleepless nights cramming for Jaegar program entrance examinations. Her first spectacularly disastrous Drift.

Meeting him for the first time. He sees himself on the deck of a rain-swept Shatterdome, climbing out of the belly of a roaring cargo chopper, looking in her eyes tired, scarred, and coiled tighter than a spring. 

The dialogue of their first staff fight in the ring. The small details that her eyes picked up; the scar on his shoulder in the same exact shape of the crescent-moon gouge on _Aegis’_ right-shoulder plate, the strained tendons in his neck, the amber cut of his eyes, his weathered fingers gripping the staff like it’s a sword. 

He feels the electric rush of her blood when she fought him within an inch of victory, and thrills when he realizes that it mimicked the rush in his own veins.

Felix emerges from the Drift inexplicably humming to himself. 

O.O

She studies the quietly drawn lines of his memories and wonders. 

Everything is blue. The sea in the summer, where his parents took him for his fifth birthday. His older brother drawing the cloth from the piano. His father’s navy uniform, pressed to militaristic crispness. The ink on his exam papers presenting a perfect simulator score. 

The blue that covers the hull of a younger, fresher _Aegis_. The victory banners of the youngest pilot duo in history. The blue of kaiju blood which corrodes the cockpit, that envelopes and destroys his brother’s body. 

Red, the color of splitting loss and wailing grief. Dark wood, containing the empty suit that is Glenn. Black, festering anger at an aloof father. Hopeless gray, the strands of hair lining his mother’s drawn face. 

She’s astonished when she sees herself through his eyes. Amongst all the dark metal and the seething blackness of the ocean, she is a bright orange flame. Her eyes are brighter than kaiju blood, the gleam of her smile too shiny to look at. 

The sheen of sweat on her forearms as they clash in the ring. The electric thrill of their mingled synergy, her iron-bright shouts as they lock staffs, advancing and retreating like the throes of love and war. She wields the staff like a hammer, heavy, brutal, demanding. 

She doesn’t look like a mousy failure. She looks like a warrior. 

Annette breaks from the Drift breathless and thirsting for battle. 

O.O

_Is it too much for you?_ His quiet voice curls tentatively around her, and it feels like fingers interlacing. _My mind, I mean._

_It's nothing I can’t handle_ . Her cheer is beautiful, like sunshine on winter snow. _Let’s do this!_

In the Drift, they share a grin. 

Outside, _Aegis_ hums and snaps out her blades, and the Shatterdome cheers.

O.O

In the central command unit, Chief Technical Operations Officer Sylvain Gautier is in the midst of cheering his throat raw before the urgent beeping of his monitors draws his eyes down. 

Sylvain’s cheer curdles in his throat. The needles of the EKG device are wildly flying up and down. Two errant signatures are flashing on his HUD. 

It’s a double event. 

_Goddamn Ingrid_ , Sylvain fumes as he flies to switch on the early warning system, _and her infuriatingly accurate mathematical predictions_. 

O.O

The two kaijus are Category IVs, the biggest ones yet both in size and weight. One is horned and craggy like the side of an alpine mountain, while the second is all teeth and scales and bulbous sacs of acid. 

Rangers Blaiddyd and Eisner are already suited in the azure and silver colors of _Areadbhar_ , hovering near the foot of their Jaegar awaiting orders. Opposite them, arrayed in the gold and red colors of _Failnaught_ , Rangers Von Riegan and Goneril play a frighteningly fast-paced game of Blackjack. 

Marshal Fraldarius is barking orders to the chopper pilots when Felix and Annette barge into the command center, still donned haphazardly in their uniforms. 

“You have to deploy us.” Felix is shouting as Annette bounces anxiously besides him. “ _Aymr_ is still too heavily damaged from the attack on Enbarr.”

“We’re keeping you as a reserve unit.” Marshal Fraldarius barely gives them a second look, lost amidst the tidal wave of pilots and technicians and mechanics prepping the Jaegars for battle. “Stay put, and if we need you, we’ll put you on the Miracle Mile.”

“Sir—” Annette tries, but Felix breaches the tidal wave and charges up to the marshal, glaring his father down.

“You can’t afford to lose _Aymr_.” He hisses, urgency clouding every word. “Deploy. Us.”

The marshal turns to glare back at Felix, and every member working in the command center instinctively shudders and gives them a wide berth. 

While the years of working in the program have ground Gustave to a fine dust, they’ve sharpened Rodrigue Achilles Fraldarius instead to a razor point. Only his son could afford to glare back into the steely depths of a man who once fought off a kaiju solo. 

“Permission denied, Ranger.” Marshal Fraldarius says in a low, angry voice. “You _will_ stand by as a reserve unit and you _will_ stay put in the Shatterdome until further orders.” 

He turns back to face the hangar. “Dismissed.”

Felix curses, and spins around to charge out of the command center. A technician has to physically dive to the side to get out of his warpath.

Annette hesitates, snaps a hasty salute at the marshal’s back, and hurries to catch up with Felix. 

Behind the relative safety of his monitors, Sylvain heaves a breath and sets to work sending out the three Jaegars to fight a nightmare. 

O.O

Kaiju blood is toxic. It stains and it corrodes, eating into concrete and flesh like acid. When it congeals, it emits radiation similar to that of raw nuclear energy. Three cities had been carelessly dyed a sickly blue before they had realized just how irreversible the effects of the fluid were. 

As a result, Jaegars are fitted and armed with cannons, bludgeoning weapons, gauntlets. Heavy brass knuckles, massive tanks of jet fuel that can burn and cauterize as quickly as they kill. Kaiju blood must _not_ be allowed to spill. 

_How ironic_ , Felix thinks ruefully, staring up at the looming body of _Aegis_ as the rest of the Shatterdome scrambles to deploy the other Jaegars, _that my primary weapon of choice is a sword._

Annette trots up to him on the gangway, mimicking his pose by resting her forearms on the railing and cocking her head to one side to study their Jaegar. Their shoulders are warm against each other. 

“It’s not his choice, you know.” She says after the purring motor in the Jaegar’s chest had made several revolutions. “The higher ups would be mad if we killed a Kaiju with a spectacular gush of blood.”

“I know.” He grunts in reply. “But I’m still pissed.”

Annette just hums, bending daringly over the guardrail to watch the transport choppers carry _Areadbhar_ , _Failnaught and Amyr_ out to war. “That’s what I’m here for.”

It’s a double meaning. She brought not only cheer and openness to the Drift, but her swinging punches and bludgeoning strength. She is what _Aegis_ should be. 

But she is there for so much else. 

Felix says nothing, but he leans into her warmth as the wide bay doors groan open to permit them a sight of the deep black seething ocean. 

O.O

Predictably, _Aymr_ is out of commission before the night is old. 

Above the sounds of von Hresvelg’s screams, von Vestra begs the command center for permission to retreat, fending off with one sparking damaged arm the snapping jaws of the mountainous kaiju codenamed Hegemony. 

_Areadbhar_ is wrestling with the kaiju with the gnashing teeth. _Failnaught_ sloughs towards them from the Miracle Mile, howling for _Aymr_ to hold on as they charge a cannon that will fire too late. 

“Pull back!” Marshal Fraldarius seizes the mic from a white-faced Sylvain and shouts an order that will never be carried out in time. “ _Aymr,_ pull-”

A crackling explosion cuts the line dead. 

The world watches in horror as the cockpit of _Aymr_ , last of the proud Imperial-1180’s, is crushed between the unforgiving jaws of a mountainous kaiju. 

O.O

As Felix and Annette bundle into their uniforms and hastily climb into the hull of their Jaegar, practically being stuffed into their dual harnesses by trembly technicians, Felix turns to Annette. 

“You lead.” He says with a shortness that might’ve been mistaken for rudeness by anyone else. But Annette recognizes the trust that he puts into those two little words, and gives him an understanding nod, her little jaw set tight and her hands repeatedly clenching and unclenching as the technicians slide the dark metal helmet over her head. 

“I got you.” Her soft reply is swallowed by the eerie silence of the Drift, and it feels like coming home. 

O.O

In the last five years that _Aegis_ had been decommissioned, the Director of Jaegar Restoration Services had made several new changes to the Mark III model. There was less serration on the blades, improved suspension systems between the joints, and two new bulky gauntlets added to the exterior of the forearms. 

The gauntlets were spiked and ridged, meant for bludgeoning instead of piercing. Creatively nicknamed CRUSHERs, they added weight and bulk to the otherwise slim _Aegis_ , and it was startling to see the once slender Jaegar suddenly sharp and heavy like a weighted hammer. 

The authorities had been hesitant on greenlighting this specific decision. Why weigh down a Jaegar famed for swift efficiency with bulky and contradictory excess weaponry?

“Your fears would be put to rest once you see _Aegis_ in combat,” the Director had insisted. 

And she went on to prove them exactly right as _Aegis_ socks Hegemony straight in the jaw, finding purchase and pulling until the lower half tears and splits as the kaiju howls in bliding agony. 

What a coincidence that the Director of Jaegar Restoration Services happens to be a specialist in CQC and Felix’s new copilot.

O.O

In the Drift, memories are not the only things that’s shared. 

Fighting techniques, combat styles, preferences for up close or ranged combat. It’s more than just theory, it’s intimacy. 

Felix’s gliding footwork makes her feel elegant, graceful even as they dive and duck the snapping jaws of Hegemony. Annette’s straightforward punches and kicks make him feel brave and headstrong as they beat the writhing kaiju until it flops onto the churning port of Faerghus with a final guttering gasp. 

The Shatterdome watches the absolutely one-sided battle with open mouths. When Sylvain finally bolts from his chair in an explosive cheer, everyone joins in, screaming and sobbing and clapping each other’s backs. 

Marshal Fraldarius watches his son make his first kill since Duscur with a full heart and a tight throat. 

O.O

_Areadbhar_ and _Failnaught_ wrestle the second kajiu, codenamed Kage, underneath the waves. It takes the full weight of both a Mark V and Mark IV Jaegar to keep the entire scaly body from thrashing up a tsunami’s worth of displaced port water. 

“Do it!” Blaiddyd shouts at the comms through gritted teeth. _Areadbhar_ ’s reinforced arms shake at the effort of holding the beast down; already the slithering, snapping tail of the beast has begun to crawl up the Jaegar’s pauldrons with a mind of its own. 

_Aegis_ snaps out a switchblade. The whip-crack of the metal locking into place is like a second heartbeat to Felix. 

“ _Failnaught_ , give us a light.” Felix says in a tone of raw ice. 

“You got it.” von Riegan wheezes, breathless. Breaking free of Kage’s thrashing head, _Failnaught_ plants a heavy, armored foot on the back of Kage’s neck to rear back and draw forth a long, curved tube of darkened metal. A steady flame burns on the end, flickering wildly in the stormy rains of the sea. 

The flame touches the blade of _Aegis,_ soaked in the diesel fuel of a ruined _Aymr,_ and the 80 foot switchblade goes up like a pyre. 

“Hold it still,” Felix warns, and with a metallic groan of straining gears and rattling metal plates, _Aegis_ puts a palm over her left fist and drives the fiery blade home, deep into the epicenter of a slithering, gluttonous brain. 

Kage screeches and thrashes, its spinning tail flailing to pierce the center of _Areadbhar_ ’s back.There is a dual howl of agony from _Areadbhar_ ’s cockpit, but the Mark V holds resolutely onto Kage’s jutting shoulders, refusing to let go even as sickly black oil drips down its metal chest like blood.

“Meet the demons who sent you.” Felix snarls as _Aegis_ forces the burning blade down until the bottom of her fist meets kaiju scales.

Kage’s thrashes weaken, and the beast gasps once, twice, and then loosens like water around the hold of the three, battered Jaegars. 

In the cockpit of _Aegis_ , Felix’s hand trembles as he lowers it from the monitor, the green light on the screen bathing his pale face in shadows of dazed emerald. "No pulse?" 

“No pulse.” Annette affirms, grinning at the blinking screens with a surge of triumph welling in her chest. 

Felix sags in his harness with relief, and the roar of the transport choppers is but a backdrop to the cheers erupting over his headset from the command center. 

The celebrations won’t last long. They still have a Breach to bomb and a world to save, but for now Felix and Annette close their eyes in sync and let the thrill of an unimpeded victory wash over them like seawater of a still body of a dead kaiju.

O.O

_"You lead."_

A simple declaration, a private plea. 

In the Drift, Annette felt his worry, a five-year-old fear that the ghost of a nearly failed mission would cripple his present one. How can a blood spilling blade help when even Aymr's legendary MIASMA cannons could not? 

In the Drift's silence, her song carries him through. Reassurance, confidence even amongst her nerves, it all flows like a hummable tune from the heart.

" _I got you_."

Her song is the backdrop to Kage's death, and as Felix drives the blade home, Annette's song is the tether that keeps the RABITs at bay.

As the transport choppers begin to carry them home, the Jaegers going limp like kittens in their mother's mouth to conserve energy, Felix fumbles with the clasp of his harness and staggers out of his restraints to throw his arms around Annette. 

It's an awkward angle; she's still strapped inside her harness and he's practically hugging her legs at this point, but nevertheless she tangles her hands in his hair and weeps over him like a Pietà.

His wracking shudders are a silent, repressed grief. Hers is far more vocal, less heavy.

In the Drift, you don't feel like there's anything to talk about. In the Drift, you see and feel the emotion that drives the other on an innate level. It’s a two-way connection in the most intimate of levels. 

As a result, it is Felix who grieves, and Annette who cries. 

O.O

They carry _Aymr_ back with reverence. The dangling arms of the Mark V Jaegar, loose-jointed and limp and silhouetted against the floodlights of the Shatterdome, looks eerily like the curved fingers of a harbinger.

 _A harbinger of what_ , Annette timidly asks over the Drift’s fading hangover afterwards, kicking her feet over the endless drop of Jaegar height as they sit together on an overhang made of I-beams and shoddy craftsmanship.

“Probably more ghosts to haunt my father.” Felix answers aloud into the bustling quiet of the hangar, watching the spray of welding sparks cast glimmering arcs of light over Annette’s kaiju blue eyes.

She laces her fingers in his and says nothing more.

O.O

Byleth Eisner hobbles from the sickbay and straight to the hangar, making it about fifteen feet only to have 4 different nurses dogpile her.

“I have a bombing run to carry out!” Her enraged and extremely affronted shout echoes throughout the hall, and the technicians walking by jump and flee like startled rabbits. When the infamously silent pilot raises her voice, there will be hell to pay.

“You’re not leaving my sickbay without a clean bill of health.” The sweet-voiced doctor plants herself in front Byleth, radiant in the way an avenging angel is. “You can’t even stand.”

“Who else is going to be Dimitri’s co-pilot?” Byleth’s normally pale face is strung tight with desperation. “His mind, it’s a minefield—”

Her shout dies in her throat when a tall man, near unrecognizable without his pressed cloth uniform, strides into the bay in the full combat colors of _Areadbhar_ , with Dimitri trailing wide-eyed in his wake.

“I have a graveyard for a head.” Rodrigue Achilles Fraldarius chuckles wryly, rubbing his temples. “We’ll match just fine.”

He turns to face his son, who has his head resolutely turned to look anywhere but at him. Annette is anxiously wringing her fingers over and over again, gazing at the marshal with eyes that are full of the agony that Felix refuses to exhibit.

“Felix.” The marshal says, and his son clears his throat, glaring up at him with eyes that, had they been sharper and darker, would’ve been a dead ringer for a firstborn who once stepped into a Jaegar and never emerged.

“If you die, I’ll kill you.” Felix finally rasps.

“I make no promises.” Rodrigue’s crisp voice catches, and Annette is the one who breaks into tears and flings her arms around both the father and the son.

 _I hate crying_ , Annette thinks fiercely to herself, _but I hate bottling this all up even more_. 

The violent tears soon subside as the foghorns on the war clock blare, signalling midnight, and the marshal extricates himself from the hold with the reluctance of a father but the briskness of a soldier.

“We have two hours.” He turns to Blaiddyd, to von Riegan and Goneril. The shadows of their Jaegars cast into relief the stony determination on their features.

“Let’s make it count.”

O.O

They remembers the run in dimly red flashes. 

_Areadbhar,_ wrestling with the first and last Category V, a muscled horrific monstrosity bigger than all three of their Jaegars stacked on top of each other. 

_Failnaught_ , drilled and torn and gnawed to pieces by two enormous Category IVs, bits of its proud golden armor drifting loose in the water as two emergency escape pods carrying two unconscious pilots shoot up to the surface. 

The Category V’s screech of satisfaction as it bites down through the hull of a rapidly crumpling _Areadbhar_ , Felix screaming for his father as _Aegis_ ’ blades bounce off the creature’s hide like rubber. 

The marshal doing the unthinkable, bundling a bleeding and deoxygenated Dimitri into his escape pod and launching him out of _Areadbhar_. 

Delivering his last words to Felix in a smiling voice, reassuring all the way even as _Areadbhar_ drops its shoulders and drives into the Category V, sending them plummeting into the mouth of the Breach as a robotic voice counts down the seconds to Rodrigue’s death. 

No one remembers the explosion. It’s all white noise, lost in the cacophonous detonation of two metric tons of nuclear explosives and a wail of loss from what’s left of _Aegis_. 

Felix remembers watching dazedly, like a dream, the intricate pattern of cracks that spiderwebbed across the hull, and seeing her pale, fragmented reflection in the fissures as he drags a near-dead Annette into his escape pod. 

He remembers the pain of having to limp towards his own escape pod, gritting her teeth to slam his bloody palm on the panel to detonate the Jaegar before it implodes. 

The last thing Felix remembers as the door of the escape pod shuts on him is how the early warning system of _Aegis_ trilled brokenly at him, like a final farewell from the ghosts that they’re finally putting to rest before the world turns orange. 

He thinks he hears Glenn’s raspy voice for a split second as _Aegis_ shuts down, but perhaps it was just his imagination. 

O.O

Afterwards, they learn to recover. 

It’s hard, living in a world who doesn’t have to build monsters to fight monsters anymore. It’s a world untouched by the dreamy blue of the Drift, by the cruel blue of kaiju blood.

Personally, Felix far prefers the ephemeral blue of Annette’s eyes, not quite Drift, not quite kaiju. They are the churning gray of a blue sea, like the sea that featured in his earliest memory. He prefers the warmth of her voice when she sings his nightmares away. 

She prefers the reddish orange of his amber eyes, burning like the nuclear core of a Mark III Jaegar. She likes how he listens to her so seriously, even as she trips over herself and her books and his feet when they dance in their summer home on the edge of the sea. 

It’s hard to live in a world without kaiju to kill, without Jaegars to pilot, without fathers to grouse at.

 _But_ , Felix thinks as Annette hums him softly to sleep, _it could’ve been a lot harder_.

.

.

.

 _fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
